August 2020: For John Lewis
/عشق را بیخویش بردی در حرم
"Love only enters your Union
when leaving behind the self."
~ Rumi
Source: Ghazal # 427
Translated by Dr. Fariba Enteshari
©Rumi Educational Center
Reflection on the Quote:
A message from Dr. Fariba Enteshari, Founder & Executive Director
Rumi Dance in My Chest!
On Friday, the 17th of July, I was ready to go to bed, when a calm voice whispered, “Break your own rule of no news at night.” I took a long deep breath and said to myself, “One more peek to see if the world is where I left it a few hours ago.”
The news was reporting the death of Congressman John Lewis who had died a few hours earlier. The report was celebrating his life and the steps he took on the earth from a very young age to the very last moments of his life.
How do we become the consciousness of the time we live in, knowing what steps to take? How do we awaken within us the soul of our time and take the lead of our spirit in an earthly life with all its injustices and distractions?
Listening to the path of John Lewis, who knew his vocation as the spirit in his given time in a human body, I saw Rumi dancing in and out of my chest illuminating each step that John Lewis took in his time on the earth.
Now, Rumi is dancing away, lifting my heart to the deep layers of heaven. Looking down, Rumi shows me John Lewis carrying a glowing iron cross of fire within his chest, speeding toward demonstrations, saying “NO!” to all dark rules and actions that crush the human spirit and dignity. Rumi dances again into my heart and asks me, “Do you remember the story I told you about Prophet Mohammad and the spirit of his words? Even the tree that he preached under was weeping when his followers moved him away to a grander pedestal.” The spirit of the tree understood his words. John Lewis was such a spirit. “He was awakened within the words of the Holy.”
From heaven, Rumi and I watch the young John Lewis, over and over being beaten on his head —with each blow another star was illuminated on his scalp. Rumi dancing away, laughing and crying, asking me again, “Do you see his badge of honor from heaven on his head despite the darkness and pain he is enduring on the earth? Do you see those damned and chained into their own everlasting misery of their choosing?”
My heart in tears and joy witnessed how a soul carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, calling the rest of us, “Come with me. You, too, can have better choices while we are here, together.”
The night went on with stories of Mathnawi told by Rumi drawing a path of light —if only we become awake enough to choose the hidden light in our hearts before we are gone!
In Rumi’s poetry, night is the symbolic image to describe our earthly life because the illuminated Sun of the Truth is hidden from us during the journey of spirit. But there are ways to feel deep within the voice of the Truth inviting us to stand up for justice in the time in which we live. Our suffering to uncover the truth of who we are in our essence leads to joy and inner peace. Let us carry the wounds of our search like a badge of honor in the eyes of heaven no matter how self-serving we are. Calming the voice of ‘little me’ knowing that we are given wings only if we try to lift others with us.
-Dr. Fariba Enteshari